Two-way town hall: Transparent building lets you 'see democracy at work'

This article was taken from the February 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online.

Bjarke Ingels's latest building, the new Tallinn town hall, will allow Estonians to check that its officials are busy running the city, and not playing Angry Birds. "The idea is transparency -- so people can see democracy at work," says the 37-year-old Danish architect. "We thought that if we made the ceiling of the council chamber a gigantic mirror, it would reflect the landscape -- a live portrait of the city that they're messing with." And anyone standing in the square outside can see directly into the council chamber through what Ingels calls a "democratic periscope". "They'll be able to see if council members are absent," he adds. "And, in theory, see what notes are being scribbled down or what dirty deals are being plotted."

The project, from Ingels's Copenhagen- and New York-based architectural practice BIG, will break ground in the spring. Ingels says that Estonia's politicians are surprisingly comfortable with being scrutinised. "They like the idea of radical political transparency," he says. "But when we explained the project to the president's office in Kazakhstan

[where BIG has designed a new national library], they said it would have cost us the job."

This article was first published in the February 2012 issue of WIRED magazine